Des had been unhappy for a long time, but she hadn’t always been like this, with the drinking, the pills. I remembered her smiling more when I was a kid, when she was still slinging cocktails at the Showboat. Some nights before her shift she would dress me up, too, and we’d dance in the living room, singing into our hairbrushes. Then her shifts started getting cut. Then business at the shop started to falter. Then we started plucking wallets and billfolds from people as they bent over the craps tables or fed money into the slots. I had that $450 and was tempted to just pick up and leave, but I knew I wouldn’t go. Not until things were a little steadier for Des. She was far from perfect, but she had never wanted a kid. She could have left me a long time ago. I felt the anger surge through me, an anger that I tried, most of the time, not to let myself feel. The way her need sucked up everything else. If I looked at that anger head-on, it would swallow me whole.

“You’ve found a lot of fucking joy in that money, by the looks of things. I hear that joy rattling around in your purse, you know. I’m not stupid, okay?”

If we hadn’t heard the knocking, I think she would have slapped me. She wasn’t used to me talking back, to me being outside her control. We looked at each other, then at the eviction notice, which I had dropped facedown onto the floor.

“It said ten days, didn’t it?” I asked.

“Leave it to that bastard Bill to give us ten minutes.” She pushed her hair away from her face and looked up at me. “You need to go answer it. He’ll have more pity on you. He can’t do anything to a minor. Tell him I’m out. Or better yet, try to butter him up a little.” She ran her fingers through my hair, pinched my cheeks to give them color. “You know the drill.”

I sighed and made my way down the stairs, into the shop. Des crept behind me so she could listen from the hall.

The beaded curtain at the front door divided the figure into strips, but right away I knew it wasn’t Bill. I could see a woman’s feet.

“False alarm,” I called to Des. “Someone for a reading, I think.” I hated that this surprised me, someone showing up at our door because they thought we had something to offer.

The woman had on a pair of those Chinese mesh slippers with the sequined flowers across the toe. I unlocked the door, pushed the curtain aside. She had long blonde hair, dark at the roots, and a small mouth that she tried to press into a smile, but it didn’t really get there.

“Can I help you?”